Hello all, my name is Aaminah Aleem and I am rising junior with a major in Biology/Pre-med from New York. Although it may seem a little surprising, my previous experience has had very little to do with marine or ocean sciences. Instead, I have always been interested in human anatomy, physiology and the biochemical processes that take place in all of us. That fascination of human biology, for me personally, has previously been limited to learning traditional theories behind the closed doors of a classroom and pre-planned laboratory sessions. With no prior experience in research, the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Science this summer was a perfect opportunity for me to witness and experience what goes on in the real world of science.
As an REU student this summer at Bigelow Laboratory, I am working under the direct supervision of Dr. David M. Fields who is also the director of the REU program. Dr. David is a zooplankton ecologist who has worked with heterotrophic planktons, specifically copepods, for years. His research has primarily focused on assessing the zooplankton ecology, identifying their behaviors, and investigating their impact on the flow of energy and other biogeochemical processes that take place in the ocean. Combining his research interests with those of Dr. Joaquín Martínez Martínez’s, with whom we are collaborating this summer, we have developed a research question that would allow me to work together with other two REU students (Madison Marra and Andrew Goode) to investigate the effects of a viral infection on the photo-physiological and biochemical processes of an algae as well as of the higher trophic level organisms.
Algae are ecologically very important. They are the primary producers who carry out photosynthesis to provide energy to all other organisms in the ocean while recycling carbon and producing oxygen. Quite often, these important organisms fail to perform their functions because of climate or environmental change, disease, and infection. Of these factors, viral infection is the most common calamity faced by many aquatic algae that either directly or indirectly transforms the metabolic balance of the entire aquatic ecosystem. Due to its significance in marine environments, we have developed a project that would help us study the direct effects of a virus on Emiliania huxleyi (a very common, globally distributed algae that forms large scale blooms), and its indirect impact on the zooplanktons such as Oxyrrhis marina (micrograzer and a dinoflagellate) and Acartia tonsa (copepod) that feed on the E. huxleyi algae.
Emiliania huxleyi
Acartia tonsa
The specific questions pertaining to my research are:
- How does the viral infection change the metabolism of the algae, specifically its respiration and photosynthetic rate?
- Do these metabolic changes climb up the food ladder? If yes, how these changes influence the respiration of higher trophic level organisms?
- All in all, how does a change is algal respiration modify energy flow and alters the carbon and gas flow in the ocean?
To find answers to these questions, my research mates and I have put in our best in this project for the last few weeks. We have faced many ups and downs along the way, some of which are amusing: melting plastic bottles to form pieces of art, suffocating our culture by tightening up the cap, running hour-long tests without the proper settings, doing wrong calculations, or adding the wrong volumes to solutions. Others were more serious, like running out of our stock or contaminating our samples. Nonetheless, we have survived… we have learned to find solutions to all kinds of little and big problems along the way.
For me, the research program this summer has been a lot more than running an experiment and collecting data. In my opinion, the true value of research lies in the skills of a keen eye, a problem solving brain, and an analytical thinking hub. This summer, my fellow researchers and I have definitely gained that at a small scale, if not to the stature of a senior scientist 🙂
The countdown has begun, only two more weeks to go. Every REU student is working a poster and getting ready for their talk. Whatever happens between now and then, I know we will all do great!!!